Having dismissed their disguises, the trio and rat were back to their regular sizes. The Treasurehunter Rat put itself forward and walked carefully at the head of the group.

Lu Yun looked wordlessly at it, but didn’t say anything. The little creature was a basket of paradoxes. It was cowardly and afraid of death, but could also be audacious to the extreme. In Mount Cloudcover, the gifts of its race bestowed it with strength rivaling a sixth step king, but it’d still been terrified of the python in the magma river.

The end of the thieves’ tunnel opened up to a huge clearing. A million kilometers across, it was plainly another pocket of space entirely. An enormous scroll painting stood...